Madman;How do you get that reaction from this piece? Can anyone in their right mind see the state of California as good.

Continuing the party in the foreclosed house days before for the bank arrives to repossess the property may send a "f*** you" message to the a**hole down the street who's always yelling "Get off my lawn" and calling the police but really gets you nowhere.

Pay your bills first then we can talk about the best way to run a household.

Heard a pundit defending CA receiving federal money to shore up it's excesses by way of comparing it to Arkansas of all places. According to Said Talking Head (cool band name, btw), CA receives about $.50 back from the federal government for each dollar it sends. Arkansas gets almost $2.

Don't know if that's true or if logic was pretzelled to get to that conclusion, but it's something I would like to see aired out as part of forming a cogent opinion. One thing that does come to mind, though, is how CA has slipped in the economy rankings assuming it's compared to nations. Isn't it something like 9th to 16th?

I don't know if it's still true, but for most of California's history it has paid far more in federal taxes than it received back. It always used to be a political campaign claim: "I'll get more of our money back from D.C."

So maybe you guys actually still owe us. You might be like Lohan's dad - living of us until we need your help and then splittin'. Where is the love? Remember the 60's when we we're the sexy hippie chick? You guys are so shallow.

One thing can be counted on: when bankrupt commie California comes hat in hand to the bankrupt commie Federal government and asks to be saved and the bankrupt Federal government turns to Ben Bernanke and asks for the money and helicopter Ben says "Sure, why not, what's another 1 or 2 trillion dollars worth of quantitative easing?" ONLY conservatives will stand in the way. But conservatives as we all know are RACISSS and will be swept out of the way if not imprisoned for their presumption. Then the deed will be done.

Do the math and see how the nation would be without California all these years and going forward. You might not want to divorce the breadwinner until you find a new one, and you ain't the hottie you used to be either.

for most of California's history it has paid far more in federal taxes than it received back.

California was a net importer of federal tax money all through the Cold War. California was the home of the biggest defense contractors, and the state was studded with military bases. But first the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, and then Clinton announced the Peace Dividend.

Once ringed with military bases, the Bay Area was surrounded with brownfields. Schools emptied out, used car dealers closed, even the historic submariners' bar moved from Vallejo to Bremerton, Wash. Silicon Valley went into recession, the price of houses collapsed -- things took five years to recover.

I very, very rarely meet someone who was actually born here. Everyone, especially here in LA, has left their native land-from all over this country--and landed here to vote in sharply different ways than the natives. We were once a conservative people, but absorbing all your disaffected liberals has given rise to a confused and sad state.

For decades we've been taking in your politically and socially disaffected, taking in voters who might otherwise cause your states to make confused decisions.

We take such people in and you don't have to deal with them anymore. That deserves a little support.

There is no "surplus" of money that CA has sent to the Feds. It was SPENT. The military that protected you all those years? Yeah, those guys get paid. Every single Fed program (many of which originated in CA) comes with a real price tag. That money is gone. Pretending otherwise is an attempt at distraction. The State Govt of CA has gone from just rifling their children's piggy banks to opening new accounts and bouncing checks in their names. They obviously have no intention of ever paying their bills, so the faster they collapse the better for the rest of the country. Gotta stop the bleeding.

MM: Making fun of your poor neighbors who are living within their means because they don't have the glamor of the credit-rich couple down the street with the flashy car and unsupportable mortgage doesn't seem like your usual style.

I see a piece like that and I remember that KGB assessment that the US could break into as many 6 smaller nations. Take a look at the electoral map of Congressional districts from last Tuesday. The Left Coast and the coastal Northeast are both economic basket cases with heavy debt and corrupt, union-run, confiscatory Democrat (socialist) governments.

Is there going to be a time when people in flyover country say, "No way, Jose"?, when the ants are called on to bail out the grasshoppers?

Excerpted from article: You've racked up nearly $70 billion in general obligation debt, and that doesn't include your $500 billion unfunded pension liability. Your own analysts predict you'll face a hole of at least $80 billion over the next four years.

California's persdonal obligation debt has nothing whatsoever to do with red states.

California's unfunded pension liability crisis has nothing whatsoever to do with red states.

They must be happy with the situation; they reelected Boxer. The morons are getting what they deserve (my apologies to the non-morons living in California).

The frustrating thing for Californians is that the majority of the districts and the majority of the land mass in the state is held by conservative/red/republicans. We are just being held hostage by the few districts and the urban areas that are liberal/democrat morons. Take a look at a map and see the blue islands in a sea of red.

In the District that I live in, which is larger than many east coast states, only ONE tiny hippie infested precinct voted for Brown.

We are held hostage by the libtards, who vote to control our lives, our resources, our lands and we have no ability to out vote them.

We have tried several times to leave the state of California.

State of Jefferson FTW.

Personally, I WANT California to go bankrupt. I WANT the welfare system to fail. I don't CARE if we have to cut back on police, fire or any other services. It won't affect my life in the least.

It will hurt the libtards and the urban cesspools the most and just maybe some of the leeches and illegal aliens who are leeches on the tax paying citizens will move out of the state when the gravy train dries up.

MadisonMan said...I really should have said New Mexico instead of Mississippi. After all, New Mexico gets twice as much money from the Feds as it sends. Mississippi is only #2.

California gets less money than it sends.===============Not precisely true. Madison is parsing between "official Federal aid" and the total Federal dollars spent in a state vs. amount of tax revenue the Feds get from such states.If one looks at the NET Fed dollars going to a place in terms of Fed employee payrolls, entitlements, defense dollars, money for contractors, schools, for the Heroes of Homeland security and their local police/TSA "Hero Partners" = unsurprisingly, DC comes in 1st with 12 fed dollars for each dollar residents pay the Feds. THen Virginia. then Maryland - with 6 and 4.3 dollars netted for each dollar the IRS gets.

Energy producing states like Alaska and Wyoming are high on the list because the Feds grudgingly kick back to the States some of the royalty money they get from offshore oil and gas field production.My sense is that paying Alaskans something for the oil Alaskans work to get - is different than a 10,000 dollar per DC school pupil Federal grant.

Still waiting patiently for some nice lefty to explain to me -- plainly, and in a straightforward manner -- just what, SPECIFICALLY, California's $500 billion unfunded pension liability (just as a f'rinstance, mind) has to do with any red state, anywhere.

Making fun of your poor neighbors who are living within their means because they don't have the glamor of the credit-rich couple down the street with the flashy car and unsupportable mortgage doesn't seem like your usual style.

They're living with their "means" because their wealthy Uncle is sending them buckets of cash every year.

Play facile little games and cry "pro-redistributionist" all day long, but the fact is that CA (due almost entirely to Liberal policies) is a massive swamp of insolvency, corruption and hopelessness. They refuse to dig themselves out of this hole, preferring instead to point their fingers and cry "But Mommy, Susie is doing it, too...".Californians refuse to elect serious people to high office, so they get tragicomic results. This time, though, the fall may kill them.

Yeah, California’s more like Lohan in “Georgia, Rule,” an abuse victim now giving free blow jobs to hardy Mormon boys (sucking down Mormon money on the anti-gay marriage ballot), until Lohan’s mother quits playing the whore like all the rest of the states in the nation (mother, taxed by a pederast lawyer husband, probably IRS) until both recover to live their own lives in God-fearing, Mitch Daniels-esque, conservatism ... a Jane Fonda flick, but don’t tell anyone too blind in anti-Jane bias to watch how individual pathologies play out the whole nation ... besides, Jane’s still a squeeze.

Uhhh....Correct me if I am wrong, but the punitary tax policies that make people with higher incomes pay more in taxes will YIELD a disparity in terms of to/from Washington. The liberals "tax the eeeevil rich!" mantra is the cause of this disparity, right? LA and NY are much richer to begin with, right? What am I missing here?

The feds have been bailing us out for years, guys. We get money from Medicare to pay for illegal alien costs to ERs, we get money to offset costs of illegal aliens in our jails, we are now being flooded with education grants.

I think California and the now fiscally ruined by financial cabals and free trade America is an entirely different situation than NYC back in the 70s, bankrupted by the fathers and uncles of the present financial cabal.

Back then, Carter or Ford or whoever it was could say "Drop dead, NYC" - but that was back when America created jobs, led the world in 27 of 30 technological indicators and was still a creditor nation with rock solid credit and currency. No one doubted the capacity of America to bail out NYC, despite the Ford/Carter recession.

California has increased spending by 100% in the last 10 years and receives more federal money than any other state. It gets 50% (almost $100 billion) more than the next closest, Texas (and 1,200% more than New Mexico, MM). But bankruptcy is the Fed's fault?

" They refuse to dig themselves out of this hole, preferring instead to point their fingers and cry "But Mommy, Susie is doing it, too...".

Nobody is pissed about California more than us conservatives out here, and the state deserves what it gets, but Susie IS doing it too, and she pointed at us first, and she's hoping that makes her feel better about her own crap.

Still waiting patiently for some nice lefty to explain to me -- plainly, and in a straightforward manner -- just what, SPECIFICALLY, California's $500 billion unfunded pension liability (just as a f'rinstance, mind) has to do with any red state, anywhere.

The California gets less then it receives is a bogus argument. It's the Hollywood and Silcon Valley gazillionaires who make that so. They can live anywhere. If California left the Union then the other 49 states would be better off and California would become another Cuba or Venezuela within a couple of years.

:Correct me if I am wrong, but the punitary tax policies that make people with higher incomes pay more in taxes will YIELD a disparity in terms of to/from Washington. The liberals "tax the eeeevil rich!" mantra is the cause of this disparity, right? LA and NY are much richer to begin with, right? What am I missing here?

Yeah, it really misses the point to say CA sends more money than it receives.

I'm so sick and tired of people using that 2005 Tax Foundation analysis as if it showed something, WHICH IT CLEARLY DOES NOT:

1) It included spending on military bases located in that state as if it were spending FOR that state. That skews severely the numbers of low population states where our ICBM silos and long-range airbases are located.

2) It dates back to 1981. It shows a time period including spending on military basres that have long since been closed as part of the "Cold War Dividend."

3) It includes transfer payments such as Social Security and Medicare as "government spending." IT'S NOT. They're called "transfer payments" for a reason: because they're simply returning money those taxpayers paid in the first place. So if you paid your Social Security taxes when you lived in California, but then retired to a lower cost-of-living state like Arizona, then it APPEARS that Arizona is getting more money back than it gave in the first place. That's clearly inaccurate and completely misleading.

4) The DATA ENDS IN 2005. That means it includes NONE of the money spent in government bailouts since Porkulus was enacted. It also doesn't include Cash-for-Clunkers or all the money spent to prop up the real estate markets in California where most of the damage has occured. By comparison, states in the middle of the country which didn't experience big real estate bubbles have gotten very little money in return.

5) Much of the infrastructure money spent in "flyover" states benefits the coastal states as much as it does those "flyover" states. For example, maintaining an interstate in Nebraska so that goods can be shipped from Chicago to California doesn't benefit Nebraskans except marginally. But the Tax Foundation analysis presumes that ONLY Nebraskans benefit and allot NONE of that benefit to either Illinois or California. Once again, a "statistic" so misleading as to be deceitful.

6) The percentage of federal government ownership of land is MUCH higher in lower population states than it is in more populous states such as California or New York. Federal money spent to maintain FEDERAL LAND doesn't benefit those local states: it benefits the FEDERAL government. But once again, the Tax Foundation allots ALL of that benefit to the state.

There are lies, damn lies, and then there is this "analysis" which purports to analyze something which even a casual analysis shows it clearly does NOT.

The percentage of federal government ownership of land is MUCH higher in Western states, irrespective of population.

And yet Alaska is continually cited by Leftists such as yourself as a "welfare state" when YOUR OWN STATS show that almost 3/4 of the land is owned by federal government. It also shows that California shows a much lower percentage of land owned by the federal government than several others on the list.

So how do you square your previous lies about Alaska being a "welfare state" with your current data showing that only barely over 1/4 of the state even belongs to Alaska?

So all your previous talking points about Alaska are now null and void. Especially when you add in all the national defense spending that occurs in Alaska because you can ACTUALLY see Russia from there. It's the forward-most early warning base in the country. Do California and New York see no benefit from this?

Please. Retire your talking points. You've just shown that they're just a bunch of misdirections and lies.

fls: We're all painfully aware of the per capita Federal spending charts (whose meaningfulness is nicely dissected by Jim above) ...I'm just trying to put some sense of the scope to it. California gets PLENTY of money back from the Feds, it just increases spending much faster than it raises revenues.

California also has the highest total and per capita number of billionaires per state as well as the most millionaires. I thought you were against tax breaks for the rich?

Let's also not forget that a sizable fraction of the federal expenditures in flyover states and states like Alaska are FEDERAL obligations to Native American tribes as a result of treaties signed by the FEDERAL government.

Those aren't the responsibilities of the individual states, but yet the bogus Tax Foundation "analysis" includes all that spending as if it were spent on those states.

One more data point that turns out to be a complete lie once you actually dig down into the numbers.

And let's not forget the point which was raised when Gates' father was trying to convince Washingtonians to institute the income tax: Gates isn't proposing taxing wealth, only income.

He's worth tens of billions of dollars, and pretty much every penny he earns is derived from income on the wealth he has ALREADY accumulated.

When he proposes instituting a tax on the money he ALREADY HAS, then we can take people like Gates, Buffett, et al, seriously.

They just want to remain at the top of the heap and prevent anyone else from eclipsing their wealth status. Notice that they weren't so "generous" with other people's money WHILE they were accumulating their personal fortunes. Awfully convenient that they just want to pull up the ladder behind them NOW that they have reached the top themselves.

I think the comparison to Lohan works because California is so pretty, with good talent and huge potential, yet its hard-partying ways have left it a prematurely-aged mess.

For those who talk about all the taxes that Cali sends to the Feds - that's yer "Progressive Tax System" in action.

But seriously, the problem is not only the moral hazard of serial bailouts, but the extreme cost of them - the price to outright BUY Mississippi probably wouldn't close the California Deficit for more than three months.

My apologies to any Mississipians in the audience, but that state is not exactly overflowing with nature's gifts, whereas California has almost everything one could want (except maybe water), plus a huge pool of human talent - the deepest in the world in many sectors.

Dude, just because I corrected one of your errors doesn't obligate me to correct all of them. There are at least three untruths in your above question alone.

You didn't CORRECT anything. You pointed that California had a 47% federal ownership. I notice that New York (the OTHER state I cited) wasn't even on the list. And it DID show that California had a SIGNIFICANTLY lower percentage of federally-owned lands than 6 other states. Considering that there are only 50 (not 57) states, that's a sizable fraction. Especially when the #1 state is the state that you and your Leftist friends have been citing for more than 2 years as the exemplar "welfare" state.

So you haven't CORRECTED anything. All you did was make my point for me and put it in even sharper relief.

And BTW, it was only 1 of SEVERAL points I made regarding the skewing of the Tax Foundation "analysis." You act like you refuted the ENTIRETY of my post, when you couldn't even successfully refute ONE point.

If that's what counts as victory in your book, then I can only assume you're a product of one of those Little League teams where EVERYBODY is a winner no matter how badly you get your arses handed to you on the scoreboard.

My apologies to any Mississipians in the audience, but that state is not exactly overflowing with nature's gifts, whereas California has almost everything one could want (except maybe water), plus a huge pool of human talent - the deepest in the world in many sectors.

And remember how fast all the Californian talk of boycotting Arizona went away as soon as it was pointed out that Southern California would be a desert without the water they get from Arizona. So it's not even like the state is self-sufficient. But, of course, the federal money spent to maintain that water supply which is spent in Nevada, Arizona, etc. doesn't benefit California AT ALL, right?

Perhaps we should also talk about all that electricity which goes to light Los Angeles which comes from across state lines too. Or is it even necessary to blow bigger and bigger holes in this bogus analysis even necessary before those who use its faulty conclusions to support their faulty arguments?

Windows Exploder is an amazingly fragile piece of software. I have taken to reloading it a couple of times a day - even after my computer at work was Ghosted last week. It might have something to do with running three monitors with XP.

Most of the time, all you need to do is go into Task Mangler (ctl+alt+del) and kill it. It will most often reboot itself. But in the rare situation where it doesn't, just restart it manually from TM by selecting "New Task" from the File menu, then typing in Explorer.exe.

Oh, but maybe in revenge, in XP, once you have reloadWindows Exploder, you tend to lose the Task Mangler icon down on the system tray that shows processor utilization.

It always goes to show that it doesn't take good software to make someone one of the richest people on the planet, just good marketing.

I always love that the libs trot out the argument about what states supposedly make money and what ones lose money, in terms of federal revenues versus expenditures.

They are invariably making the implicit argument that the purpose of government is to redistribute wealth, taking from one group and giving it to another.

This argument though is not accepted by a majority in this country any more, and, likely not here either.

Also, take note, that these states tend to send delegations that have strong influence on both taxing and spending priorities. If this supposed misallocation of resources is really that bad, then they should immediately move to curtail it - and the best thing that they could do for that would be to go to a flat tax, instead of the rapidly progressive one we have now (obviously, not as bad as it has been or could be, but still quite progressive, with almost half of the country not paying any federal income taxes). After all, the basic problem is that a very large percentage of our very highest earners live in these two states.

Yeah those arguments involve redistributionist assumptions, but I’m clueless how I’d draw lognormalized vectors on taxation even if I wanted to redistribute wealth given increasing income inequalities. What the hell is optimal taxation anyway, and what would optimal taxation target - existence, activities, final product outputs, intermediate activities and outputs, wages, exempting what - and how could any value added tax scheme not be manipulated by crooks playing on the coefficients against the theory that no tax on capital might be optimal. And in a dynamic system?

I think that you need to agree on the goals of taxation first. Is it optimal revenue generation? Is it simplicity? Hard to evade? Able to reward friends (and maybe hurt foes) through tax advantages/penalties? Should it make things more "equal"?

I am reminded of our President admitting that he would be in favor of raising capital gains even if it meant lower tax revenues, because it would spread the wealth around.

As with most government programs, there are a lot of stake holders with differing goals and priorities here.

So here's our final warning: When you inevitably crash and burn, don't count on us to bail you out.

This is the moral from the election. Don't even think about going back to Congress when all the gimmicks run out, and you are back paying in IOUs, instead of cash. No bailout this time. Ain't going to happen. You need some tough love, and the new Republican majority in the House is going to force that on you.

I am being a bit facetious here, but the reality is, I think, that a lot of the newly elected Republicans are not all that likely to view the sorts of bailouts that these states have been getting very favorably.

"There are lies, damn lies, and then there is this "analysis" which purports to analyze something which even a casual analysis shows it clearly does NOT."

Perhaps, but it also does not prove the reverse is true. This is all very complicated, and it's unlikely any proof could be offered either way that wouldn't have someone else offer some equally unresolvable counterpoint.

Despite all the talk of dysfunction in CA, and it's government is clearly that, the fact is that CA is a very busy, energetic, and prosperous state, unequaled in the union in pure output, even by multiple states. This leads me to believe that despite it's problems, it likely is a net contributor that the rest of the nation depends on substantially, especially in agriculture, high tech, defense, and emerging markets.

Although they are badly treated by the state, entrepreneurs are widespread, very numerous and successful. More so than I've seen in other states. Most people think of Hollywood when they think CA, but it's primarily a working state with lots of agriculture and industry, and most people are blue collar just like anyplace else and more so than many. Lidsey Lohan is not anything like most Californians. They are mostly like you, just politically stupider that's all. There is nobody famous that could accurately represent California.

just what, SPECIFICALLY, California's $500 billion unfunded pension liability (just as a f'rinstance, mind) has to do with any red state, anywhere.

The red states pick our pockets to the tun of around $50 billion a year. We'd like it back so we can pay off the aforementioned unfunded liability. What is more likely is that the red states will continue (a) taking our money while (b) lecturing us about our moral failings.

Which, ironically, makes red states the metaphorical equivalent of Barack Obama -- forever taking money from "the rich" while telling them they had it coming.

According to this data (which sadly only goes back to 1981), California ceased being a net importer of tax dollars in 1986 and wasn't much of one prior to that.

More critically though, your data stops in 2005, which is conveniently well before the bubble burst and we entered the Obama recession.

The reason that this is of interest is that during booms, the top incomes, the ones that are taxed at the highest rates, are at their highest. And this was when these states cranked up their public payrolls and pensions. Welfare benefits also went up.

Their basic problem now is that those extremely high incomes have crashed.

This has several effects. First, it is likely that the amount that CA and NY are net exporters of money to the federal govt. has crashed, secondly, their state revenues have similarly crashed, and thirdly, their over-generous welfare payments have skyrocketed.

BTW, you can see the federal tax dynamic at work for CA between 2000 and 2005, where CA federal taxes dropped from $276 billion in 2000 to $233 Billion in 2003, and back up to $289 billion in 2005, when the figures ended. Presumably state income taxes followed suit.

The red states pick our pockets to the tun of around $50 billion a year. We'd like it back so we can pay off the aforementioned unfunded liability. What is more likely is that the red states will continue (a) taking our money while (b) lecturing us about our moral failings.

I have an idea. Let's just cut defense spending and tell our enemies that we won't bother protecting either state. And, we can start taxing for highway use based on where the trucks are going and coming from.

Or, maybe the feds can open up enough military ranges in CA and NY to support modern warfare training. Some of those pot-infested national forests could be bulldozed. And, why we are at it, maybe we can also ship all our nuclear waste there too. And, I have no doubt that there wouldn't be many complaints if the central valley in CA were nationalized. And, finally, I suspect that a lot of Indian tribes would love to trade their current reservations for comparable reservations in California - esp. if they are close enough to major population centers for gambling.

According to Said Talking Head (cool band name, btw), CA receives about $.50 back from the federal government for each dollar it sends. Arkansas gets almost $2.

This is a function of three things:

1) Large numbers of filthy rich plutocrats who happen to live in California (and New York, Connecticut, and the other coastal blue states that always make this complaint.) Last I knew, the Left thought progressive taxation and redistribution was hunky-dory. If they want to go back to a flat capitation tax they should say so, instead of trying to do so through the back door via appropriations gamesmanship.

2) Large expenditures in thinly-populated flyover country that benefit the entire nation. National parks in the Mountain West. Farm subsidies in the Midwest. Tax rebates to encourage exploration in Alaska and the oil patch. Dams on the Western and Southern rivers, and nuclear power plants in someone else's back yard, that ship electric power to the coasts. Military bases, roads, bridges and ports all over rural America. A huge amount of the alleged "transfers" to rural America are for the good of all. It's not red-state welfare when most of the expenditure is intended either to produce cheap goods for consumption by blue-state urban rabbit people, facilitate their shipment to the blue-state urban rabbit people, provide recreation to the blue-state urban rabbit people, or protect the blue-state urban rabbit people from their enemies.

3) Elderly people collecting Medicare and Social Security tend to congregate in the Sun Belt. Unless you can change where the sun shines, or force people to stay in the state where they paid in to the kitty, there is always going to be this type of transfer from blue state payers to red state recipients.

These are huge flows o Federal money that are unimpeachably for the benefit of everyone. Parochial pork-barrel earmarks from the likes of Robert Byrd or Don Young are chump change by comparison. And in any case, I am willing to abolish all of the above and return to 1890's levels of federalism as soon as practical. But I suspect the well-fed, overpaid, Democrat-voting, pencil-pushing, can't-milk-a-cow-or-change-a-tire urban rabbit people of blue America would object strenuously.

More critically though, your data stops in 2005, which is conveniently well before the bubble burst and we entered the Obama recession.

The data doesn't appear to be available for the Obama years yet. However, the data here does include the bursting of the dot-com bubble, which is when California's troubles really started. The housing bubble just made things worse.

I have an idea. Let's just cut defense spending and tell our enemies that we won't bother protecting either state.

Was that supposed to make sense? As has already been pointed out, California has always been a big defense state, for obvious reasons: we're both a border state and a coastal state, and have several strategically important harbors. If you think tax money is leaving the state to pay for national defense, you're high.

And, we can start taxing for highway use based on where the trucks are going and coming from.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face? You know as well as I do that when you slap a tax on the transport of goods the cost just ends up getting passed on to the consumer -- in this case, the people in flyover country. Slap a tax on transporting goods to them and either (a) they'll pay more or (b) they won't be able to get the goods at all. Nobody would bother shipping fresh fruit and vegetables to Podunk if it wasn't profitable.

I love that. Er, these spending programs and allocations were created by liberals.

"Californian" does not equate to "liberal". Yes, a solid majority of the state's residents are left-wing, but that still leaves millions who aren't. In fact, in absolute numbers there are more George Bush and John McCain voters in California than there are in Texas. We get the worst of both worlds: left-wing representation paired with right-wing ignorance and condescension.

Why didn't Obama fix this with 59 Democratic Senators and a large house majority?

Because 57 of those 59 Senators, and all 41 of the Republican minority, liked the fact that California is a net contributor to federal coffers.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face? You know as well as I do that when you slap a tax on the transport of goods the cost just ends up getting passed on to the consumer -- in this case, the people in flyover country.

This from the same people who think that corporations should be demonized and made to pay even more uncompetitive corporate income tax rates?

THAT is funny.

Make up your mind. Is putting additional taxes on corporations a good thing or not? Do consumers wind up paying the cost of those taxes or not?

Because EVERY single time that Leftists want to raise the corporate income tax rate, everyone else points out the FACT that corporations don't pay taxes: their customers do. The FACT that corporate income taxes are the MOST REGRESSIVE kind possible because even the poorest person in the country has to buy products made and sold by corporations.

NOW, all of a sudden, corporations having to pay taxes so that this supposed disparity can be addressed, is supposed to be harmful to consumers?

Seems like some sour grapes because Boxer won and because Brown won. But whose fault is that, really? If Republicans wanted to win those seats they could have put forth some viable, smart, outside-the-Establishment candidates. Instead, they ran the crappy CEO Fiorina and the mediocre CEO Whitman, both of whom were Establishment warriors in business suits...

Besides, Brown has promised to slash state spending. You don't hear many Democrats toting that line. Give him a chance and see how does!

The Lieutenant Governor position is pretty much powerless... and who better to represent California in a powerless position than Gavin Newsom? The man was made for the job. But eh-- if you want to come from out-of-state and decide that you know better on the issue of gay marriage, then... ummm... well you can just go fuck yourself 'cuz it's none of your business.

Oh, I forgot. Republicans have to run everything. They need to decide for everyone. They need to separate the country into Us vs. Them. And now they start by shitting on California. Less than one week after a successful election and Republicans have already discarded their humility.

Jim pretty much pwned this thread. He completely destroyed the debtor/lender state myth.

Dead Julius does have a point. The CA GOP needs to get its own house in order. It’s not enough to run Astroturf campaigns for state offices & expect the masses to fall in line. They need to re-build from the bottom up. Boxer’s scum, but she had boots on the ground. The GOP base has been locked out of the process by party elites. They need to fight back rather than whine.

But no sour grapes, here. There’s a lot to love about CA & I’m even considering moving back. Weather's nice, family's there & there's a large consumer base. We’re just worried about the current state of economic affairs & the terrible K-12 system.

just what, SPECIFICALLY, California's $500 billion unfunded pension liability (just as a f'rinstance, mind) has to do with any red state, anywhere.

The red states pick our pockets to the tun of around $50 billion a year. We'd like it back so we can pay off the aforementioned unfunded liability.

You're either being clumsily disingenuous, or else simply do not understand the question. Let me try to make it even simpler for you, if possible: in what way, SPECIFICALLY, are red states responsible for the damning reality of YOUR $500 billion unfunded pension liability?

This from the same people who think that corporations should be demonized and made to pay even more uncompetitive corporate income tax rates?

No.

MAKE. UP. YOUR. MIND. Your situational outrage is outrageous.

Jim, I'm not sure if you're new around here or if you're just not that bright, but believe me when I say that any of the regulars reading that little rant of yours got a chuckle out of you lumping me in with "Leftists".

You're either being clumsily disingenuous, or else simply do not understand the question.

No, I'm simply ignoring the loaded way you phrased it.

Over the last decade, approximately half a trillion dollars in tax money has left the state, never to be seen again. Did this problem "SPECIFICALLY" cause, e.g., our pension problem? Of course not. But even a child can see that being half a trillion dollars poorer makes it a lot harder to pay the bills -- even if the bills in question are the result of poor political decisions.

Next baby step forward, then: does California bear any responsibility to address (and remedy) its own manifest culpability for its present fiscal difficulties, BEFORE attempting to poutrage or otherwise foot-stamping more responsible states into bailing it out of its difficulties...?

It's a Bacchanal, and California keeps going back to the vomitorium so to take yet another glass of wine, while the other states seem to be sobering up.

Indeed. As evidenced by my exchange directly above with Revenant, in fact: they (California) plainly feel entitled to demand gargantuan infusions of cash from other, more sanely responsible states before taking even the most half-hearted or ginger of steps toward remedying the problems that have placed (and continue to place, daily!) them in such a nakedly untenable position in the first place.

It's the equivalent of a drunken sot being (rightly) confronted with primary authorship of his own difficulties; only to have him turn around, in response, and self-righteously blame you for not being willing to cheerfully bankroll his tavern sprees for the next year, as a matter of course.

Schwarzenegger tried hard to rein in spending, back in 2005. But his Prop 76 only got 38% of the vote. Other reforms he pushed was to make it easier to fire dud teachers, require union members to authorize use of their dues for political activity each year, in writing, and take redistricting out of the hands of the legilature, to end the safe seat monopoly. All failed.

Next baby step forward, then: does California bear any responsibility to address (and remedy) its own manifest culpability for its present fiscal difficulties, BEFORE attempting to poutrage or otherwise foot-stamping more responsible states into bailing it out of its difficulties...?

Tex rolls his eyes. "I like how cutting back on expenses never even crossed your mind."

As someone who's lived his whole life in net contributor states, let it be known my position is: Screw California.

Being a net contributor state isn't your problem. Texas is a net contributor state. Border and immigration? Texas's border with Mexico is longer, and the adjoining population of Mexico is higher. And so on.

You guys have messed up your own state. After you change your policies (like on public employee unions) to match Texas, then we can discuss a bailout of legacy problems. But as long as you keep digging, you can go to hell on your own efforts, thanks.

Enjoying the discussion immensely here, but I must interject. First, will no one take up for MS? It must be worth SOMETHING. Natchez was a charming little town when I visited.

Second, while I don't comment often (since I usually just make an ass of myself when I do), I have been hanging around these parts for more than a few years. Trust me, Revenant is no leftist. You may disagree with him on this issue, but those of you calling him a leftist would probably find on closer inspection that you agree on many more things than you disagree (if I may be so bold as to make such an assumption about the involved parties).

It is just sheer coincidence that this "nonpartisan" group has produced data that lefists have been plastering all over the Internet for the last several years.

The Tax Foundation is, like I said, a nonpartisan think tank. If you had to slap a partisan label on it the sensible label would be "conservative" or "libertarian", since it generally favors tax cuts and tax simplification.

I realize that you didn't bother thinking any further than "they're telling me something I don't like, therefore they are totally biased and leftist". But in the unlikely event that you actually want to learn something about tax policy, they're a good resource.

The report, covering federal spending for the 2009 fiscal year, says that Californians received $346 billion in federal funds during the year from dozens of specific programs, including Social Security, 10.7 percent of the $3.2 trillion in federal outlays.

And, the state takes in about $67 billion in revenue.

And Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a record $13 billion tax increase in Feb 2009 (shockingly: he tax receipts of the California state government dropped 13.9 percent).

As evidenced by my exchange directly above with Revenant, in fact: they (California) plainly feel entitled to demand gargantuan infusions of cash from other, more sanely responsible states before taking even the most half-hearted or ginger of steps toward remedying the problems

@ Kent.

As a Californian (since 1958) I deeply resent being lumped in with the likes of Pelosi, Boxer and Moonbeam Brown.

Most Californians who live outside of the urban areas are not Democrats, liberals or in the least little bit happy with the state of the State. We are disgusted with the over the top environmental rulings that have destroyed jobs, the excessive regulations that destroy business and the high taxes that seem to only go to benefit the urban areas and to feed the welfare beast.

We don't like the California that exists today. And. Speaking for myself....I hope the State goes bankrupt and that the rest of the States give California a big middle finger.

If there were any way to detach ourselves from the State of California...we would do it. There would be no detrimental effects on us in doing so. We aren't going to lose any services.....We don't have them now. We would gain autonomy and the ability to use our own tax revenues for our "own" benefit. We would gain the ability to utilize and gain revenue from our own resources.

As evidenced by my exchange directly above with Revenant, in fact: they (California) plainly feel entitled to demand gargantuan infusions of cash from other, more sanely responsible states before taking even the most half-hearted or ginger of steps toward remedying the problems that have placed (and continue to place, daily!) them in such a nakedly untenable position in the first place.

I said nothing of the kind. What I said is that other states have been leeching off of us and that it would be easier to pay off our existing obligations -- which, by the way, we cannot get rid of short of bankruptcy -- if we had that money back. I have never said anything that could be interpreted as saying that reform wasn't a priority, and in fact have often argued here that it is.

Basically you just decided to make stuff up and then claim I believed it. Try to be a little more honest in the future.

Sorry, I still don't understand what you're getting at here. The Federal tax code is very progressive and California's still a relatively rich state so it naturally pays out more than it takes in. By your logic, Compton is "leeching off of" Beverly Hills.

Doesn't it? I suspect that if I had said "welfare recipients leech off upper-income earners" then you, Jay, and Kent would be tripping over yourselves to agree with me rather than insisting that it is somehow different when the recipients of the tax dollars live in Iowa or Nebraska.

What are you advocating, a flat Fedral tax structure?

That would be nice, but it isn't politically possible.

Really, though, I would settle for a little more gratitude and humility from residents of the states who receive more than they contribute. It is bad enough having to pay the taxes without having the recipients of my money tell me how morally superior they are to me. Like I said, it reminds me of Barack Obama -- taking my money and spitting in my face.

If there were any way to detach ourselves from the State of California...we would do it. There would be no detrimental effects on us in doing so. We aren't going to lose any services.....We don't have them now.

Huh?

I-5 north of Orland or so to the Oregon border is beautiful, smooth as glass. From Los Banos to the Grapevine it looks bombed, like a K-Mart parking lot.

But Yreka is a ghost town, with a newly opened Round Table Pizza struggling to survive. Then you get to Ashland, OR, where the whole town is fully leased.

I suspect that if I had said "welfare recipients leech off upper-income earners" then you, Jay, and Kent would be tripping over yourselves to agree with me rather than insisting that it is somehow different when the recipients of the tax dollars live in Iowa or Nebraska.

It's not different at all, just surprised to see you so worked up about it. A strong Federal government and progressive taxation make aggregate wealth transfers between regions - whether they're states, counties, zipcodes or whatever - inevitable. I don't really see a basis to be more upset about transfers between California and New Mexico as opposed to any other pair of relatively rich and poor geographic regions.

Really, though, I would settle for a little more gratitude and humility from residents of the states who receive more than they contribute.

I don't know what the "leech" states should be grateful for, exactly, since the statistics don't seem to mean much for reasons that a couple of other commenters have pointed out quite clearly.

I live in Idaho, and they're putting in a(nother) wind farm here to give California "renewable energy credits." If our electric bills increase (which is apparently a possibility), are we going to get "humility and gratitude" from the SoCal liberals who are having their consciences pacified by our wind farm? Heh. I'm looking forward to getting a nice thank you note in the mail.

The extra $2 billion a year in other states' money you receive just for existing?

are we going to get "humility and gratitude" from the SoCal liberals who are having their consciences pacified by our wind farm?

Give me a break, Julie. Wind farms are being built in Idaho in order to take advantage of California's dippy greenhouse gas law. They're hoping to make money by selling us "green" power. Don't pretend they aren't going to turn a profit off of the deal; those windmills aren't being built as a favor to us.

Now, will your power costs go up because of supply and demand? Sure, maybe. If you don't like capitalism, move to Cuba.